According to Survey, Companies Are Not Learning from Complaints on Social Media

The research reveals that that 35% of adults interact with brands to complain and 44% interact with brands online to request information. The study discovered that the majority of brands do not take on board social media feedback and improve customer satisfaction. Instead, brands defend and fight negative comments on Twitter and do not actually take on peoples comments.

Some people just love to complain you can’t get away from that fact. But what our results also show is that consumers are sharing information via social media because they genuinely want brands to be better at what they do. The problem comes when brands think they know best. They’re behaving a bit like teenagers, and being too petulant to actually see what’s in front of them, said Giles Palmer, chief executive of Brandwatch.

Speed isn’t enough. Too often, when faced with a negative comment brands are too quick to ping back an automated message. Perhaps this is the industry’s fault for placing too much emphasis on speed of response. It’s not about speed: it’s about understanding what your customers are taking the time to tell you, learning lessons, and acting on this feedback. The study found that 27% of UK adults interact with brands on the web at least once a month and more than a third of people who do do it to complain about their poor service. Companies need to understand that they don’t always know best and that they learn from the mistakes pointed out by their consumers can be key in being successful.

It’s that opportunity that businesses have to be so close to the consumer, that when they are not happy, they can fix the problem at hand easily and not make that mistake again. Additionally, more than a quarter of UK adults share information about the things they buy online, and almost one fifth discuss what they think about brands online whether positive or negative. Nearly a third of tweets to brands are support related, and 25-55% of customer services inquiries on Facebook and Twitter go completely ignored. As the white paper says: Would you turn your back toward a customer who walked into your store or hang up on them if they called?

It is becoming clear that social media savvy consumers are an incredibly important segment of any company’s customer base, both because they have higher service expectations and they have wide broadcast networks for sharing their experience with others. By failing to take Twitter seriously as a customer service channel, companies may be inadvertently ignoring some of their best customers at their own peril.

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